Theoretical physicists at the Université libre de Bruxelles have developed a fully-symmetric formulation of quantum theory which establishes an exact link between asymmetry and the fact that we can remember the past but not the future.

The laws of classical mechanics are independent of the direction of time, but whether the same is true in quantum mechanics has been a subject of debate. While it is agreed that the laws that govern isolated quantum systems are time-symmetric, measurement changes the state of a system according to rules that only appear to hold forward in time, and there is difference in opinion about the interpretation of this effect.

from WIKI

Now theoretical physicists at the Université libre de Bruxelles have developed a fully time-symmetric formulation of quantum theory which establishes an exact link between this asymmetry and the fact that we can remember the past but not the future — a…

I have good experience in writing flash fiction for a Dutch story site, so I have decided to also write flash fiction in English. With flash fiction I refer to stories of a few hundred words – up to one thousand.

It’s my intention to publish one to two flash fiction stories on this site each week and to publish a longer story (up to 3,000 words) at least once a month.

The flash fiction will be either stand-alone stories or part of a series. But the themes of this FF stories will be same as the other stories on this side.

Besides this changes I will continue with my “contemplation” articles and occasional reviews.

“Science Fiction is something that could happen – but usually you wouldn’t want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn’t happen, though often you only wish that it could.”

– Arthur C Clarke.

Has anyone else noticed how easily people get confused between fantasy and science fiction? Yes, these two kinds of storytelling are related and sometimes intermingle to a degree, but they are different genres.

I once explained the difference this way. In Star Trek, the Enterprise goes to warp speed because of some confusing gobbledegook about dilithium crystals, quantum tunnels, inertial dampeners and the warp drive. In Star Wars, the Millennium Falcon goes to light speed because it can. How it goes to light speed is utterly, utterly irrelevant in a story concerned with fairy tale themes.

Let’s be completely clear on this: Star Wars is not science fiction. It is fantasy; a fairy tale…

Stop picturing little green men in your mind whenever you talk about aliens because, according to Simon Conway Morris, a leading evolutionary biologist from the University of Cambridge, if aliens exist or we ever encountered them, they would look a lot like humans.

It has always bothered me that aliens in popular culture media more often than not are humanoid. This never made sense to me. Simon Conway Morris argues that similar conditions would result in a similar fauna on an alien planet, so the alpha predator that would eventually emerge and become sentient would be humanoid.

65 million years ago the Chicxulub asteroid effectively wiped out a majority of the fauna on earth. In particular, the entire dinosaur population did not survive. Scientists speculate that at that time dinosaurs like velociraptors may have been hunting in packs and coordinating their actions. Let’s assume…